Ouroboros
by FiveExclamations
Summary: Kira Nerys and Gul Macet have been sent into the past by Bajor's Prophets and must build a life for themselves. Please check warnings.


**Fandom:** Star Trek Deep Space Nine

**Whole Fic Title:** Ouroboros

**Chapter Title:** Lost

**Pairings:** Kira Nerys/Akellan Macet

**Ratings:** FanfictionNet - M (Implied pregnancy sex), LJ & AO3 - MA/Explicit (pregnancy sex)

**Warnings:** See ratings.

**Word count:** 2.1k approx

**Spoilers:** Anything from the series and the relaunch novels.

**Notes:** Can be read as a stand alone, but would make much more sense if you've read Doppelganger

**Lost**

Kira Nerys, now known as Akellan Nerys, sat chewing the end of her Sinoraptor's quill pen, looking down at a sixty year old ledger that detailed the finances of the local carpenter's great grandfather.

She was trying to understand how Yonis Ral's ancestor had divided his business between his son and his estranged second wife upon his death. It had become important because the grand daughter of the second wife had turned up with her husband and her five children and was claiming that the business belonged to her.

Nerys was currently trying to calculate the actual worth of Yonis Otra's estate at his death, but between his dreadful handwriting and creative mathematics, she wasn't having a great deal of success.

She sighed and rubbed her eyes; the motion caused the ledger, leaning on the edge of the table and resting on her expanding stomach to slide and before she could catch it, it fell to the floor and flopped shut.

She cursed under her breath, trying to recall what page she had been reading from. Not for the first time she missed the technology of her old life, a Padd would have automatically remembered the last page she'd visited, plus it would have searched all the entries and done the maths for her too.

She leaned over and picked up the ledger, grunting irritably at her middle's refusal to bend the way it used to. Then she stood up and went to look out of the window, planning to take a little break and start fresh when her irritation had subsided.

Stretching out her back, her spine braced on her hands she saw that the sun was dipping behind the hills and a heavy amber light was warming the stones of the village square. It was later than she had thought, the shop keepers were beginning to bring in their wares including Natambi the weaver, who saw her looking out of the window and waved, nearly loosing her grip on the bolts of cloth she was carrying.

Kira waved back, then let her eyes drift along the shop fronts that she could see, one selling fruits and vegetables, another pots and pans and another proudly displaying a freshly painted sign declaring that it was Utran's the butchers.

Her eyes popped open in alarm, she'd forgotten it was her turn to cook and the butcher and the baker would be closing very soon.

She yanked her cloak from the hook on the back of the door and dug in the pocket for the archive's key, which wasn't there. Cursing she did a rapid search, finally finding the key on a shelf populated by marriage records and shoving her papers into something approaching a neat stack she ran out of the door and half way across the square before doubling back, cursing afresh, to lock the door behind her.

She grabbed a loaf from Twhonie the baker and made it to Utran's just in time, asking for something to bulk out the left over Ratamba stew that Macet had made the night before.

Utran suggested some Porli meat, which he cut into bite sized pieces for her and wrapped in waxed paper. "Now bring that stew back up to a simmer and drop this in for no more than ten minutes, else it will get tough. But not much less! You don't want to make yourself sick again, not in your condition," he lectured her.

Kira's hackles rose, the village was small and everyone knew everyone else's business. Kira had never had to cook much beyond the basics of campfire cooking and her one and only attempt to make Hasperat had left both she and Macet competing for time in the outhouse. By the next morning most of the villagers had arrived with sustaining broths, home made remedies and sympathetic amusement, which Kira had done her best to accept with good grace, while wishing they would all just go away.

Utran had been very vocal under his veneer of concern about a Bajoran who couldn't cook Hasperat and now pressed her with all sorts of cooking and household advice, which however useful it might be to a Bajoran who had never had to keep house, was unwelcome because of its patronising delivery. Once or twice she had politely, but with an edge, told him that she could manage on her own, but that had led to some massive sulks on his part and Kira found the cuts of meat they received suffered accordingly.

She missed the ability to court-marshal people sometimes.

So, she forced herself to acknowledge his advice politely and was about to leave when he reached out a hand as if to stop her. There must have been something in her eyes, because his hand dropped from her sleeve as if it burned him.

"I was just going to ask how the investigations are going," he said, in an aggrieved tone.

She closed her eyes for a moment, cursing internally, Macet would be annoyed, not _at_ her, but still annoyed when he went in to fetch the meat tomorrow and was given the driest cuts. "I haven't found anything conclusive," she said, noncommittally.

"It's a shame," said Utran, his eyes gleaming with schadenfreude. "Ral's worked hard at that business, what does this cousin think she will do with it when neither she nor her husband have ever picked up a chisel?"

Kira shook her head again, her personal opinion was that Yonis' cousin didn't want the business at all, in all probability she would suggest that Yonis buy her out. Money was undoubtedly the root of it all. But Kira would rather poke her own eyes out than gossip with Utran, even if it did mean poor meat for a few days. "Luckily I don't have to make the decision, I just have to find the evidence, one way or the other."

"Ha!" Utran rolled his eyes, "I bet Ashali doesn't like that. If our Truth Bringer can't do the whole job perhaps she should step down."

Kira gave him a cool look, "Really, perhaps you should suggest it too her."

Utran's eyes dropped, Kira's employer, Ashali Ral was a kindly curmudgeon most of the time, but she was a force to be reckoned with too. He made a harrumphing sound and waved his hand, whether as a goodbye or a dismissal Kira didn't bother to contemplate.

She seethed her way slowly across the square, wishing that Utran's pettiness wouldn't get to her. Her new life was very different to anything that she'd previously experienced. In the Resistance there were common goals and the constant threat of discovery and violent death to pull people together, in the Militia dealing with the lower ranks could be delegated, even as a Vedek her calling had pulled her towards the academic study of prophecy and unsurprisingly, considering her background, politics. She'd never lived in a small, insular, civilian community before.

Conversely, approved on arrival by Ashali Ral, who had exhorted the villagers to accept his odd face and strange ways, Macet had taken to Village life like a Klingon to Blood Wine. He was thoroughly enjoying his work with the local metal smith and was becoming increasingly fluent in the Bajoran language every day. He'd achieved a level of contentment that she'd never seen in him before, comfortable in the villager's general acceptance of him and his relationship with Kira.

The village was extremely isolated, Kira believed that they were somewhere in Bajor's southern hemisphere, but close to the equator. They were surrounded by mountains to the North and East and beyond the foothills,desert to the South and West. The village owed its existence to the presence of a wide valley peppered with hot water springs fed from the mountains. Thousands of years before the ancestors of the Pylchyk that the villagers farmed for meat and milk had come down from the mountains and found the fertile valley with its abundant vegetation. They'd settled there, evolving into much heavier beasts then their rock scrambling cousins.

Eventually, a small group of Bajorans, seeking a faster route from the Southern Peninsular to the cities north of the equator had found the valley and some had stayed, bringing their families to join them. From there the Village had grown, never given any other name and developed it's own culture, distinct from the distant cities, towns and villages.

Kira had been a fighter and the village didn't need fighters, the land of the valley might be fertile, but it would only support so many and was too far from anywhere else to make it strategically interesting. They were never even bothered by bandits.

Kira had been a Cleric and the village didn't need Clerics, Ashali Ral communed with the Prophets as and when necessary and other than that the villager's relationship with them was a casual call for blessings and curses depending on circumstances, often marked with a temporary shrine made of stones or whatever else they could find in the immediate area.

So, Kira felt stuck, with nothing to do but wait out her pregnancy and fulfil the "task" the Prophets had set her, to bear her child and complete "the circle."

They had no way of determining exactly how far they had been sent into Bajor's past, both she and Macet had left the study of the stars to Stellar Cartographers and navigational computers, so didn't have the first idea how to gauge the passage of time from the constellations. However, with the knowledge of the future they possessed, they had come to some conclusions.

Kira was pregnant with Macet's child, in their original time line a thirty thousand year old statue of a part Cardassian, part Bajoran man had been found in the archaeological digs at the ancient Bajoran city of B'hala, suggesting the presence of Cardassians thousands of years before anyone had thought they'd arrived on the planet. To compound the mystery the statue was made of Jevonite, a stone only found on Cardassia.

From Kira and Macet's current position in time, it seemed obvious what circle their child's birth would complete and they'd both developed a tendency to examine rocks for Jevonite.

Though she was happy in her pregnancy Kira couldn't help feeling like the Prophet's pet incubator, so she'd been grateful when Ashali had offered her work as her assistant, at least it had given her something to do.

She lifted the latch on her front door and walked straight into the main room. To the right was a table and chairs and the stairs to the upper story, directly ahead was the door to the wet room and its stone sink and pump and to her left was the range, which both heated the house and cooked their food. She walked straight through to the wet room and to the stone box used to keep food cool, taking out the left over pot of Ratamba. Returning to the range she placed the pot on the top and knelt down to stoke the fire, then she unwrapped her packet of Porli and, once the stew was simmering, dropped it in, taking the wrapping back to the wet room for rinsing and return to Utran's.

By the time the food was ready Macet had arrived, smuts from the forge fire caught in his ridges and smelling smoky and slightly sweaty.

"Hmm," he came up behind her and wrapped her, bump and all, with his arms. "Dinner looks good."

"It should," Kira reached behind her and ran a finger down his nose, "you cooked most of it yesterday, I've just added some Porli."

"Oh, that should be good," said Macet with conviction. He yawned into her shoulder. "I'm going to wash."

She grabbed his hands, trapping them on her belly, "Do you have to?" She leaned her head back, nuzzling her face into his neck, "You smell good."

He smiled and his hands wiggled free and slid upwards, making her eyes go wide. She reciprocated by squirming against him, liking it when his hands dropped to her hips and pulled her in tight. "That feels good," she said, huskily, into his ear.

He paused, and stepped back a little, "Are you _sure_ it's all right?" he asked, his tone slightly anxious.

She found his concern endearing, he'd asked her every time since they'd known she was pregnant and he was getting worse now that, according to their best estimates, she was due. "Bajoran women need to be completely relaxed to give birth, what better way to get me there?" she said, pushing his hands down, under her bump. "Unless _you_ don't want to?"

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, pulling her close again.


End file.
